@ardenflo I too am intrigued by the big U-turn on the south side. I don’t think there’s anything similar on other F1 tracks is there? How will cars behave around such a corner?
I’m never any good at telling what a track’s going to be like at this stage. Are we talking Abu Dhabi, Adelaide, or somewhere in between?

@olliej It’s clearly in the middle. Certainly better than rubbish Abu Dhabi but nothing will come close to Adelaide these days as FIA won’t allow it. Too dangerous, too fast for the closeness of the walls.

It’s almost 6 km long. Long straights with little of wide 90 deg turns. It will be fast. Start/finish straight will be 1,2 km long. Back straight is 1,1 km long. U turn is nearly 900 meters long. And five ~400-meter long straights.

The closest corner that resembles the U-turn that I can think of is turn 5 at the Houston Indycar circuit – where Franchitti had his accident last year. Probably flat out and it looks like it will be blind all the way round.

I was fairly critical of the original drawings but hopefully, turn 2 (or 1 depending on whether they count the kink on the put straight as a turn) could be a decent overtaking spot. Sadly the pit straight will no doubt be a DRS zone so it doesn’t really matter as everything will be done before they reach the turn anyway.

Much better looking than in the hideous sketch picture on the official F1 Website. The section on the west side of the track is quite fast with corners less than 90 degrees. And there will be lots of overtaking into turn 2 after that huge curved straight(must be at least a kilometer in length) with maybe cars running side by side through the huge turn 3(would be awesome if it’s a banked turn, unlikely though) Overall, let’s wait and see but it’s much better than I expected from the sketches

Yep, not a classic, not a better modern track, like India and the CotA.

That U-turn and possibly that increasing radius left-hander near the beginning of the final zig-zags looks to be the only two prominent features. I wonder waht the elevation and camber changes will be like, but I have absolutely no positive expectations on those fronts either.

I agree. 11 virtually right angled turns doesn’t inspire me at all. The only feature of interest is the long U-turn, but in the race it’s likely to be one at a time through there so don’t see it creating exciting racing. Could cost a lot of time if you catch a backmarker at the wrong place though.

I thought under modern regulations, Turn 1 of any FIA circuit has to be at least 45 degrees? That looks like less than 45 degrees to me. Unless there’s some loophole in the turn 1 rules I’ve forgotten about (likely)

Ermm, no. I think what you have mistaken is that the FIA regs do not regard a curve of less than 45 degrees as a ‘first corner’. Here’s 7.7 from the FIA regulations

Starting straight (see also point 7.3)
For standing starts, there should be at least 6 m length of grid per car (8 m for the Formula One World Championship).
There should preferably be at least 250 m between the start line and the first corner.
By corner, in these cases only, is understood a change of direction of at least 45°, with a radius of less than 300 m.

There is a big “circle turn” around a coliseum (South section), will it be like the Turkish GP’s turn 8, and i’m especially asking about G-force? How long will it take for the drivers to go around, while feeling their heads almost being torn to the right?

The first lap could be mega on this track. Long run to the first real corner, and then straight into that U-turn with all of the cars piling in? Then straight into what looks like the fast section followed by the long ‘straight.’ Then there’s the odd looking left hander, which opens up the longer it goes. There are 5 corners I’d like to change though. Something like this:

@philereid – The first half of that is actually fairly close to the original design (the back half is mostly unchanged), but it was decided that having that long left-hander feed into a fast right-hand flick was perhaps a little bit too bonkers, especially when there is very little room for run-off at that right-hander.

Looks interesting in parts . But apart from the u turn and the curving straights , I don’t think anything should challenge the drivers . Gradient wise sounds so boring . But hey , you can tell one corner from an other one.
Also interesting is how much strain will be caused on the 2014 cars by running 50 odd laps on that u turn and how much fuel consumption will change ( I remember Barcelona having the highest fuel consumption).